


Dark Places

by confiscatedretina



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-07
Packaged: 2018-01-07 23:05:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confiscatedretina/pseuds/confiscatedretina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of dark short stories based on prompts from the Ladystuck 2013 challenge list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Two Sides of a Coin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pinkandsatany](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkandsatany/gifts), [sleepyempress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepyempress/gifts), [Sermna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sermna/gifts), [LeftRightFight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeftRightFight/gifts), [skeletalLanterns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/skeletalLanterns/gifts).



> Two prompts for pinkandsatany!

**Prompt 1:** what would have happened if terezi had died instead of vriska when they faced off?

**What Now?**

You spin on your heel and blink past blue blood spattering your glasses from a torn wing. The blade brushes by your shoulder, tearing cloth and skin with another mist of azure droplets. Her red glove bunches under your clawed, vice-like grip as you snatch the sword from her hand.

Terezi has nothing to say. Or so you tell yourself as she chokes in surprise around the sudden deep slash in her neck. She lands on her knees, hands lifting to staunch the irreparable wound, and you jam her own blade through her middle, the same vital spot she was aiming for a moment ago. With a twist of your hand, she falls, the sword making a wet sound as it lands on the metal roof and pushes through her back.

“Fuck,” you whisper.

Blue clouds your vision and you tell yourself it's just more blood, somehow, as you put a hand on your shoulder where it's beginning to sting. You sink to your knees as an ethereal pain in one wing brings with it the realization that it's for nothing. You can't leave now.

“Oh, fuck.”

Teal smears your clothes, clashing with the bright sunburst colors, when you pull her cooling, limp face into your lap.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

Someone is standing in front of you; you can just see his rainbow-smeared shoes on the other side of Terezi's limp foot. You don't bother to lift your head to see or face him because, frankly, you couldn't care less right now. The air whistles around something blunt and heavy a moment before it cracks down between your horns.

_That should do it,_ some otherworldly part of you thinks. Hopes. _Please let that do it. I murdered her, so this is justice, right?_

Far away, somewhere just beyond your perception, a clock is ticking.

_Please let it be._

Tik. Tok.

_Please._

Tik.

Tok.

_Please..._

Tik...

* * *

  
Prompt 2: Anything set in canon, no fluff please.(if you could deal with either the pre sgrub years or after vriska's death that'd be great)

**Treasure Box**

There's a tiny speck of blue against the teal fabric on her abdomen. She doubts anyone else would notice, but it stands out like a supernova against the black of space. She touches it with a fingertip, feeling the dried texture, careful not to brush it off.

The vest comes off first, cherry red folded with reverence and placed in the chest. Next are the gloves, carefully laid on top. Then the undershirt with it's precious dot of dried blueberry spice. She shivers and swallows the lump in her throat as that is carefully placed with the rest. The boots, speckled blue against red (a nice combination, she can't help but think), are set aside while she drags the teal pants over her legs. When those are folded neatly, she places the boots on top and softly closes the lid. A tiny gold key is gripped in a shaking hand.

She stands on stiff legs and exits the secret alcove, the sound of a door closing echoing like a dropped sword. When she gets to the roof, a frigid breeze born of motion through nothing makes her bare skin prickle. The only warm spots are the space under her arm where a plush dragon nestles and the palm of her hand holding a blue-stained blade.

A lemon-dusted key sails into the endless licorice black. She sits on the roof's edge and curls in on herself, sword forgotten at her side. Alone, she lets the tears slide down her cheeks and sobs where no one can hear her.


	2. and the strong waters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sleepyempress: Here's something completely open-ended: pick whichever characters or themes you want. All I ask is that you use Margaret Atwood's poem "Looking in a Mirror" as your starting point. Because the world needs more Atwoodstuck.

**and the strong waters**

“Bad dog,” she whispers. “Bad, bad dog.”

But, of course, she can't say it with her mouth. She hovers over the world she still loves, feels heat burning through her shoes, irradiated lightening crackling through her hair. Her hands are raised in anger, darker-skinned than they were mere hours ago, and a growl issues from her throat unbidden.

“No, bad dog, stop...”

The protests are nothing but a quiet murmur curled in the depths of her being. They were louder when it started, when she first felt the Condesce's siren puppet strings wrapped around her soul. It's not that she's given up, just that she's run out of things to try for now. And watching through her own eyes as she betrays all the people she loves is a thousand bullets ripping through her heart.

A blinding light knocks her earthward and she sighs as blackness takes her. Maybe in a moment she can make amends, stand up under her own will and apologize. How wonderful that will be. How very wonderful...


	3. Today

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sermna: Let's hear about Terezi's day-to-day life before SGRUB! The only thing is, this time her lusus is hatched and Terezi has a certain amount of responsibility over her, which includes feeding her. She is nothing near as demanding as Vriska's lusus, and most of the times she can fend for herself (woolbeasts and things of that ilk) but sometimes she needs extra sustenance. I want to see how Terezi handles this moral dilemma. Would she even care? Make sure the trolls were "guilty?" Or would she even refuse to do it?

**Today**

“Aww, shit, what's up, mother fucker?”

“Hi, Gamzee! Just feeding my lusus.”

 “Cool.”

 Even upside down he's smiling. Maybe it's those slime pies he eats? It reeks and I hope it won't bother her too much.

“Hey, 'Rezi, can you help a brother get down?” 

“Sure, just give me a second.”

He doesn't sound in too much pain, but who knows? Maybe his nerves are dulled. I hope so. It kind of sucks that it's a guy I know who stepped in a trap this time, but nature's law is still the law. It'd be nice to know how the hell he got this far from the coast, though. I put my sword cane between my teeth and shimmy up the tree's trunk until we're face-to-face. 

“Hey, sorry about this,” I say after I get a good hold of the trunk with my legs and put the sword in one hand. “Dragon's gotta eat, too.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I get that.” 

I'm pretty sure he doesn't until I grab a handful of his salt-crusted, tangled hair to pull him closer.

“Shit! That hurts, fucker!”

“Sorry.”

I shrug as best as I can and slit his throat. Gurgling, warm wet dribbles over my fingers. He chokes and the rope around his foot creaks as he swings free of my grasp. I put two fingers in my mouth (they taste like warm grapes) and whistle, sharp and loud.

She darts through the leaf canopy and snares his still-warm, still twitching body in milkshake-white talons. I cut the rope before she can take the branch off with her meal and slide groundward. She's going to leave a mess on the roof again, I can just tell.

“See you later, Makara,” I sigh and wipe the blood off my sword in the grass before heading home.


	4. The Clown's Basement

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LeftRightFight: This is a CHALLENGE. Attempt to rewrite Calliope's story as closing to canon as possible... in OUR world. I'd love to see how someone can intertwine hate-romance, imprisonment, and body-sharing into a modern setting. Include other characters like Roxy, Caliborn, etc... as you see fit. Don't feel limited at all in creativity, pick somewhere in the world today and see if Calliope could have the same experiences there.

**The Clown's Basement**

I turn off my computer with a sigh and brush a tear from my cheek. I'm going to miss Roxy a lot. She's been a good friend.

The chain around one ankle slithers across the floor as I scoot my chair back from the desk. Through the tiny window, the day's light is fading. That's good; I don't really want to see how much red is on the walls today. How much more there is than yesterday.

Overhead, my guardian's footsteps clump through the floorboards. It sounds like he's in the kitchen. I hope the steak is cooked this time...don't I? My tongue runs over my teeth, involuntary, as something inside remembers the taste of cold blood.

“No,” I murmur, wrapping my arms around myself. “I haven't had enough time today.”

“You've had all the time you deserve, bitch,” he growls through my lips. “It's my turn. For good.”

“Please, don't do this,” there are tears on my cheeks but I don't want to wipe them away and risk the sleeves of my nice green suit.

“Oh, grow the fuck up, _Calliope_ ,” he makes my name an insult. “You're time's up. I'm through living with your bullshit and living in this dank hellhole. I'm getting out. Tonight. And you can go fuck yourself in hell.”

I shiver in silence, fingers digging sharply into my arms against my will. He's right. When the light fades, it's over for me. I've said my good-byes and put what few affairs I had in order. I did my best to defeat him, the brother who lives in my mind and has threatened to kill me since we both could speak. My best wasn't enough. I guess it was never going to be.

Sighing, I pick up a piece of paper that's streaked with an obscenity written in dried blood. Beneath the word, I can still clearly see my drawing of Roxy and Callie Ohpeee, my role playing avatar. We're dressed in our bright god tier outfits, smiling and victorious. I smile as the last rays of light bleed away.

The lock on the door at the top of the stairs rattles as darkness envelopes me. A sliver of light cuts through it like a knife as my guardian enters with tonight's dinner. I can smell the meat and it's cold. A grin spreads over my dry lips. Fuck a cold slab of beef and fuck this place. He's got the key in his pocket and he thinks she's still in my head. Well, isn't he in for a fun surprise? I'm about to have a nice, warm dinner, and it won't be cheap ass steak. And then...then this place is going to burn.


	5. Daylight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> skeletalLanterns: I'd be interested in something with a focus on Kanaya and her gardening. Setting is up to you - trying to garden on the meteor, in dreambubbles, on her SGRUB planet or even on Alternia. If you feel like you'd like to include pairings in this, be my guest, but no pairings are fine!

**Daylight**

It's hard to remember which garden is which sometimes. She's had so many: a few on the meteor, several in dream bubbles, the one she tended with her mother grub lusus on Alternia... That's the one Kanaya misses most. As she pushes red earth over another seed, the young troll thinks this garden is a lot like the one she had at home.

The plants here are coming along quite nicely. Blue, violet, red, green, yellow...all the colors of the hemospecturm shimmering pleasantly in the scalding sun. It's beautiful and she could stay here forever.

A shadow blocks her view for a moment, massive and familiar. She turns to smile up at her lusus before going back to work. They dig and plant, weed until Kanaya's dress is smudged with dirt and her lusus' white insect-like legs are caked almost to her chest in red. It's so peaceful and right.

“I had the worst dream,” she says to her lusus as they work. “The world ended and all my friends started dying. You died... I think we made a new world somewhere in there, one to replace this one, but it wasn't the same.”

Her lusus rumbles and Kanaya turns to look up into that beloved face, worried.

“But...no, that can't be right,” she says.

When her lusus gives voice again, Kanaya realizes she has to be right. She could never understand the mother grub when they were at home. Worse, her dear guardian has confirmed everything anyway.

“Well...at least we're together,” she smiles and puts another seed in the ground.

The sky begins to dim with sunset and a cold feeling settles in Kanaya's bones. Her mother grub makes a sad sound.

“I don't want to go,” Kanaya's voice is small and sad. “It's terrible there, and lonely. Eridan murdered me, you know. He was my friend.”

A big leg presses against her shoulder comfortingly, urging the troll to her feet. She sighs and looks one last time at her lusus, tears in her eyes, before turning toward the pink Alternian moon. Light fills her vision and her pulse begins to beat loudly in her ears.

On the cold floor of a dark room, surrounded by the stench of blood and death, Kanaya Maryam opens her eyes.


End file.
